Editor’s Note: My old friend Carlos Cedillo, who has contributed to Planet Waves as an artist and writer, will be doing a column on the Maya calendar each Wednesday afternoon. Now that 2012 is supposedly over, the calendar systems of the ancient Maya are mentioned less but are no less beautiful or meaningful. Like many, I’ve been curious about this calendar system, and it will be great to have Carlos on board. Please put your questions and comments in the comment area below — Carlos will be reading them. One other note: I’ve written just one article about the Tzolkin or short-count; for years it was the ‘lost article’ in the Planet Waves archives, and it turned up recently. Here it is, for now without any graphics, published 11 years ago tomorrow. –efc
The Maya calendar is one of the most innovative systems for calculating units of Time that has ever been created.
One of its most interesting features is that it does not appear to have been connected to any cycles of the Sun or the Moon. Instead we see cycles of different numbers running together like gears in a giant interdimensional clockwork. It is a calendar based on the human body, our 20 digits and our 13 major joints: two ankles, two knees, two hips, two wrists, two elbows and two shoulders and our neck.
This system was not used by only the Maya, but was in use or at least known about far into North America. There remain traces of the “Maya” calendar in medicine-wheel motifs used by most American Indian tribes to this day and its influence even appears on the Great Seal of the United States as an eagle holding 13 arrows.
It is said that there are 17 different Maya calendars that they keep track of all at once. Many of those cycles are the large numbered long-count cycles that have been counted back as far as 16.4 billion years ago and can be counted forward into the future.
At the core of all the Maya calendars is what is known as the Tzolkin, or sacred count of 260 days. This sacred cycle itself can be further broken down into smaller cycles and also expanded and multiplied to see into the near future.
For now let me create a little glossary of terms and concepts I will be using often: